The Pretender | Tom Riddle

30| merope gaunt

30| merope gaunt

   It was a strange feeling. A feeling that she wasn't inside her body anymore. Her body had become nothing but a gas that was slowly disappearing into nothing. The atmosphere felt thick as black clouded her eyes. She could hear Dumbledore's voice, Harry's voice, and she knew she wasn't in Dumbledore's class anymore. He wouldn't be speaking in such a tone, and the voices that boomed in her head were slowly beginning to mesh together. She could feel the difference between her desk chair listening to their Professor rant about a certain spell to where she was now. She didn't threaten to move, scared that she'd see her arm turn to complete ash in front of her.

"I have decided that it is time, now that you know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you fifteen years ago, for you to be given certain information."

It felt as if she was floating off her chair, hands becoming numb as the black didn't clear. Small signs passing by slowly and Harry and Dumbledore's voices muffled by another force.

Great Hangleton, 5 miles
Little Hangleton, 1 mile

Hissing filled her ears, no longer coming from Harry or Dumbledore, or the round man that flashed across the blackness. Seren was slowly beginning to understand what was said through the parseltongue, all because of Harry's mind and the way she'd invaded it almost all his life.

"And you I take it are Mr. Gaunt?"

"M' daughter Merope." She felt the clouds clear, goosebumps raising at the sight in front of her. A girl with a ragged gray dress standing at the stove. Her hair was dull with a pale heavy face. Seren noticed her eyes, staring in complete opposites. Seren was taught extremely well to avoid people of this sort. The Lestranges were very much a strong pure blood family, yet even they couldn't stand the sight of the Gaunt family. Seren winced in shock, loud clanking of a pot falling. She'd barely tuned an ear in to whatever Mr.Gaunt had been saying, not even looking to see what Harry and their Professor was doing.

"Pick it up!" The man shouted, "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck."

The round man seemed just as equally terrified at Mr. Gaunt's form of speaking to his daughter. She watched as he fixed it himself, Gaunt sending him a look of displeasure. "Lucky the nice man from the Ministry is here. Perhaps he'll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn't mind dirty squibs."

She flinched at the words. Lucinda and Remington Lestrange weren't the best parents, weren't the kindest but never had they spoken to her in such a way. It almost made her feel privileged and spoiled to complain about her own problems involving her family's lifestyle and views, as if there weren't people like Merope Gaunt living in worse conditions. It made her see both side to the pureblooded ideals with their extremities and lack of sympathy.

"Summons?" Gaunt shouted after the man, anger filling him, "Do you know who you're talking to you filthy little mudblood?" The man stood his ground, eyes watching the ring on Gaunt's finger as he showed it off. The man leaped forward, releasing his ring in irritation and going for Merope's throat, handing coming around a necklace, "Slytherins! Salazar Slytherin's. We're his last living descendants."

Seren stared, hands shaking. How on earth had Hepzibah gotten her hands on it? And she felt unbelievably stupid at the realization that this was Tom's grandfather. A voice rang through their ears, the sounds of movement outside of the house.

"My God, what an eyesore! Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?" As if half thinking it was her Tom, she looked to the window. "It's not ours," the man's voice boomed, "Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son's quite mad you should hear some of the stories—"

More chatter was heard, Tom Sr's voice speaking, "Don't look at it Cecilia darling."

"Darling," the son Morfin Gaunt had spoke, "Darling he called her, so he wouldn't have you anyway."

The older man turned to his son and daughter. Morfin staring at his sister who was looking even whiter than before, "What did you say Morfin?"

"She likes looking at that Muggle."

"Is it true?" Gaunt spoke through gritted teeth, "My daughter — pure-blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin—"

"But I got him father!"

"You disgusting little squib, you filthy little blood traitor," Gaunt's control weakened, hands squeezing around his daughter's throat before the man could wave the wand throwing him across. The man made a run for it when Morfin came hurling toward him. And outside of the cottage Seren felt her breath quicken. The sight of the man in the carriage with a beautiful girl. He was almost indentical to her Tom. Handsome. Dark-haired, their skin complexion identical.

"So Merope was... Sir does that mean she was ... Voldemort's mother?"

"It does," Dumbledore nodded, "And it so happens we also got a glimpse of Voldemort's father."

Tom Riddle Senior. The handsome Muggle. She'd never seen a Muggle before, but she surely didn't expect to find any who looked like that, which made her feel ridiculous just at the thought.

"Can you not think of any measure Merope could have taken to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion and fall in love with her instead?"

"We must do a certain amount of guessing. Within a few months of the runaway marriage, Tom Riddle returned without a wife. Rumors that had been hoodwinked flooded the village, what it meant that he been under an enchantment that had now lifted. The villagers guessed that Merope had lied to Tom pretending that she was going to have his baby."

"What went wrong?"

"Guesswork but I believe Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband couldn't bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. Maybe she'd hoped he had fallen in love, she was wrong as he left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son."

      Everyone stared. Confused at Seren's outburst after being frozen in her seat, conveniently unnoticed by Professor Dumbledore not calling on her once. She was on her feet, not saying a word as she walked through the rows of desks, ignoring the stares as she left the room, face with the empty corridor where it felt like she could breathe again.

Tom was two seconds away from leaping out of his seat with Seren's things in his hands to go out and find her. His eyes caught the professor's for a brief moment freezing him to his seat. Tom wasn't going to allow himself to looked affected by his seat mate's sudden burst out the door. He couldn't show that inside he'd been itching to understand why she had suddenly felt frozen and anytime he looked her way it'd seem like she was becoming less herself by the second. Instead, he sat eyes on Dumbledore like he had something to prove, because he did.

Because if he were to let himself hurry to Seren in hopes of finding out why she'd become so distant during their lecture, it'd prove to Dumbledore exactly what he needed to show Tom that he was right. The conversation he had with him in the office, after sharing a surprisingly lovely moment with Seren in the courtyard. Where he'd lay next to her, laughing and enjoying the scent of vanilla, it'd been ruined by the Professor standing in front of him. All due to the fact that the Professor felt the need to speak of a time before Tom, almost blaming him for the way he acted with Seren. Taunting him like Tom felt no emotion.

Like he'd known before Tom ever had, that he'd never truly love anyone. It wasn't in his hardwire. And being around Seren, would only weaken him because she was the closest thing to feeling something he'd ever had. She would only get in his way, and prove that—despite all his efforts—he was nothing but an ordinary wizard with no purpose in life other than what was expected. And he couldn't have that. He knew his real purpose in the world, the years at the orphanage spent thinking of what would become of him.

And he wasn't going to let some pureblooded witch get in the way of that.

He was incapable of loving Seren Lestrange.

::.